Los Angeles Chamber Ballet

BalletFest 2000 wants to showcase California classicism, but the best thing about it is the enthusiasm of its dominant audience: the teachers and, especially, students of the summer school workshop of the American Cecchetti Society. Ever encouraging and alert for any glint of technical competence, this classical in-crowd buoyed an uneven opening program by two local companies on Thursday at Cal State L.A.

Sculptor and master glass bender Michael Flechtner has brought a rollicking menagerie of colorful, animated 3-D and bas-relief neon works to the Julie Rico Gallery in his show, "Gas, Food & Logic." A neon dinosaur head greets you at the door with a friendly roar. Four-foot-long sharks pop out of a toaster. Cows jump over the moon. A cat plays cat and mouse with a computer mouse. The series of flashing gorilla heads could remind one of Mt. Rushmore.

8pm Dance You can think of it as Dance Kaleidoscope in toe shoes, but BalletFest 2000 wants to be more than just another affirmation of Southland diversity. Over three nights--with related screenings and other satellite events--this new performance series showcases California's home-grown classical ensembles to emphasize the creativity and excellence that star-obsessed local audiences often ignore. On Thursday, Inland Pacific Ballet and Pasadena Dance Theatre share the program.

For more than a century and a half, the moonstruck adagio has defined the art of ballet, but no longer. Perhaps due to the pace of contemporary living, perhaps because of increased demands for virtuosity on the ballet stage, legato has become virtually a dying art. The repertory of nearly any company can furnish proof, but the nearest example might be the program by Los Angeles Chamber Ballet at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre on Wednesday.

Southern California choreographers get so few performance opportunities that their creations seldom enjoy any shakedown or tryout phase. Instead, what you see in a major showcase, such as the final "Dance Kaleidoscope" program on Sunday at Cal State Los Angeles, often seems close to a workshop draft: rough, unready, incomplete. Take Meri Bender's solo "After Images"; it's not really a piece at all but a staged outline.

Movies Jennifer Lopez stars in the sci-fi thriller "The Cell" as a child therapist involved in a breakthrough research program that requires her to journey inside the mind of a comatose serial killer in hopes of saving his latest victim, a missing girl. Vince Vaughn co-stars. Opens wide Friday.

A dancer whose tattered leg warmers brought classical ballet to the pop art world has agreed to a $35,000 settlement with the photographer that she alleged had promised her royalties but left her penniless.

From the moment Thursday when its printed synopsis appeared on a front curtain at the Japan America Theatre--almost as wide as the proscenium and almost as intimidating as Holy Writ--"Dmitri" aimed to be the story ballet to end all story ballets.

For choreographer Raiford Rogers, the '50s were a time of superficiality and hypocrisy. But his new "So Nice" looks less like a biting satire of the period than an affectionate, even nostalgic, send-up. The work received its premiere on a four-part program by the Los Angeles Chamber Ballet at the Japan America Theatre on Thursday. Rogers is company co-artistic director, with Victoria Koenig.